Page:The genius - Carl Grosse tr Joseph Trapp 1796.djvu/49

 ently steady and serious. I wanted maturer experience, seasoned with prudential practice.

Accident soon gratified my wishes. Don Pedro Nunez, a young nobleman of Granada, purchased a country-residence close to my father's. Though still in the vigor of youth, yet misfortune had visited him earlier than me. Popular report stated him to have run his sword through the body of a once adored wife, whom he caught in the act of adultery, and to have made her seducer share the same punishment. With the possession of a once faithful consort, he had lost every relish for social life, and came to mourn in solitude the severe blows of treacherous fate,

His gardens being contiguous to mine, I often saw him in his lonely haunts, trying to obliterate the sense of his woes by the various amusements and occupations of gardening.

A little brook divided our respective domains. My side of the premises, being obscured by a thicker of high bushes, I could easily see him without being seen. I soon perceived a structure in form of a monument. with an urn at its top, raised by his orders.